Alibaba launches first local data center in Indonesia

Chinese cloud giant Alibaba have announced that their first local data center in Jakarta, Indonesia has commenced operations. With this launch, Alibaba seeks to gain ground over competitors like Amazon and Microsoft in the rapidly growing cloud market of South East Asia.

Alibaba say that the rate of cloud adoption in the South East Asian region is quite staggering, with SMBs as well as local startups contributing to this growth. They further added that in a bid to lend data center services to these cloud-native enterprises, expanding in this region was necessary.

The cloud giant claims that their cloud services are more suited to meet the demands of local players. Speaking about the launch in detail, Raymond Ma, General Manager for Association of Southeast Asian Nations at Alibaba Cloud, commented:

We are the first global player that has a local data center in Indonesia. From the latency and service quality perspective, we are probably better than vendors who have data centers outside of this country.

According to Alibaba, the South East Asia region has tremendous potential for growth and its internet economy is predicted to touch USD 200 billion by 2025. With this foresight, Alibaba revealed that they have been investing in e-commerce, AI-based and cloud-based companies since last few months and will continue to do so going ahead.

The government of Indonesia says it is delighted to witness this enthusiasm on the part of the cloud giant. Emphasizing this, Rudiantara, Indonesia’s Minister of Communication and Information Technology, commented:

We need friendly foreign investors like Alibaba Cloud, who can add value to business processing in the country. In order for Indonesia to make sure that we will be the biggest digital economy in the region.